These Angrez Sasura Must Be Crazy

Even as the 19^th century wason its last legs, there appeared a unique book in England. Titled TheCricket Field of a Christian Life, the book, a curious mixture of cricket,morality and religion, was a powerful reassertion of the ideals of MuscularChristianity which first emanated from Sir Thomas Arnold in Rugby Public Schoolin the 1840s.

Written by Reverend Thomas Waugh, thebook is all about a Christian team batting against Satan’s devious and immoralbowlers who violate the spirit of the game. The batsmen feel that they have tocontend not only with the quality of the bowling but also with the attitude ofthe ‘ungodly’ bowlers.

One wonders whether the fictitiousCaptain Russell of Lagaan had indeedsurvived his ordeal in central Africa to meet Reverend Waugh after his return toEngland. If he had made it, there is no doubting what could have been thegenesis of Reverend Waugh’s Evangelical masterpiece—the cricket field ofChampaner where the well-oiled white colonial machine met their match at thehands of a rag-tag-and-bobtail peasant outfit just four years before ReverendWaugh wrote the book.

If Russell had not returned to theMother Country a sane man after his African stint, it is possible that ReverendWaugh would have talked to G.F. Vernon, the captain of the team from Englandwhich played against the Parsis in Bombay in1891. In the real match, which wasorganised by the then governor of Bombay, Lord Harris of Kent, it was Parsibowler H. Modi’s action that was anything but divine for the English batsmen.Similarly, in the celluloid classic, it is Gola’s action which make them teartheir hair in desperation.

Hang on though. What if Reverend Waughlived a full century down the line in truly secular England where AnglicanChurch priests administer the Sunday mass to the few elder citizens who areassembled in the church imagining they are standing in front of crowds thatthrong the premier league soccer grounds?

Well, hold your breath. He would stillhave authored his Christian classic. For, he would have got valuable inputs frompeople such as South Africa-born former England Test batsman Allan Lamb, who in1992, went to the tabloid press accusing Pakistani speed merchants Wasim Akramand Waqar Younis of ‘diabolicallytampering with the ball.’ Little has changed in 100 years!

Perhaps, the people who realised it mostwere the group of young Pakistani supporters who descended on Boleyn Cinema inUpton Park in London’s Eastend, an Asian working class area, to watch Lagaanon the same evening as the author. Clad in their national colours and with theirnational flags draped around their shoulders, they waited for the movie tobegin. Yes, they were waiting for Bhuvan (Aamir Khan) to begin his heroicsagainst the English.

The desire in them to see the Englishbeaten in cricket and rendered powerless in civil society has never been higher.Two weeks prior to the day, Pakistan had pulled off an astonishing win at OldTrafford in the last session to square the Test series and it had beencelebration time for them. But not for long, as ball tampering allegations wereraised against captain Waqar by the English media.

The victory had been marred by thehumiliation of being called cheats by implication. Even though Pakistan defeatedEngland at Lord’s by one run in a Natwest Triangular series one-day game aweek after Old Trafford, they had not had enough to compensate for.

The Old Trafford Test itself was playedwith the ground being a veritable police fortress owing to the racial riots inthe neighbouring area of Oldham. And fresh racial riots involving the Pakistaniand white working classes had broken out in Burnley in east Lancashire on theday that preceded the day they made the trip to Boleyn Cinema.

Inside the theatre, when the sun’sfirst rays fall on the pitch on match day, there is a hush in eager anticipationof events. And then there is pandemonium.

‘Reverse swing, Wasim Bhai,’ theydemand as Deva runs in to bowl.

‘Sabhash Saqi, sabhash,’ they roaras Kachra spins a web around the English batsmen. (Who cares if Kachra is shownin the movie as a handicapped leg-spinner and not an off-spinner in the mould ofSaqlain Mushtaq?)

‘Kya sixer mara, Inzy,’ they yell asBhuvan cuts loose at the end to give his team victory.

Nothing detracts them from cheering onBhavan’s outfit. Not even the bhajan sequence, which situates theimpending victory of the peasants in a Hindu context.

At the end of the movie, as the groupdispersed talking about their team’s chances against Australia in the final ofthe Natwest series at Lord’s two days later, I contemplated the reasons behindthe absence of vociferous and visible Indian support in the audience. It surelycould not have been class because the area was home to working class Indians aswell.

Could it be that the Indian immigrantswere at a lower level of fervour because their team was not involved incricketing action this summer in England? Possibly.

But somewhere in my academic mindsomething told me that the incident illustrated the manner in which theincipient nationalist contestation of colonialism, which is whatpre-Independence Indian cricket is all about, has been hijacked in thepostcolonial era by Pakistan in the form of its rabid anti-racist discourse.

As I rushed back along with my Indianfriend to his home, the most poignant moment of the evening flashed before mealmost as a vindication of my theoretical position. ‘Angrezon ke liye ye sirf ek khel hai, lekin yeh hamara zindagi hai,’(‘For the English, this is just a game. But for us it is our life.’) Aamirtells his team-mates in that magical moment before the match.

The section of the movie-house where theflag-waving group is seated breaks into wild applause. There was a collectivesense of anger in it, indignation too. At the word ‘Paki’ being usedderogatorily very often by white working class England for everything related toAsian immigration.